Jessica Middleton-Pugh at MIPIM UK

The potential for a wide-ranging waterfront spatial strategy, the delivery of Everton Stadium, and a possible start on the long-awaited Festival Gardens have been discussed by Liverpool leaders at MIPIM UK.

Festival Gardens

In February, Homes England revealed it would provide a grant of £9.9m to facilitate the development of up to 1,500 homes at Liverpool’s 90-acre Festival Gardens.

The news followed the naming of a joint venture to lead the long-awaited project, with the council announcing it had entered into an exclusivity agreement with Ion and Midia, working with architecture practices BDP and AHR. Remediation was due to begin this spring but is yet to start.

When asked about the delay, Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor of Liverpool City Region, said the city council and its Mayor, Joe Anderson, “are absolutely desperate to get spades into the ground” at Festival Gardens.

“We’ve got over most of the legal hurdles,” he said. “We’re desperate to get spades in the ground but it’s about bringing the community with us. Many now see it as greenfield. It’s brownfield, but as nature has taken over, plants have grown and people see it as green space.

“We want to remediate as soon as possible, so we can bring forward innovative methods of construction of the homes, which form part of our housing allocation.”

Waterfront

The £5bn Liverpool Waters masterplan, which has outline consent, would form part of the waterfront spatial strategy

On a panel regarding making the most of Liverpool’s waterfront, Liverpool City Council chief executive Tony Reeves said he was exploring the potential for a spatial policy to span the entirety of Liverpool’s waterfront and into the city centre, covering the city’s headline proposals such as Everton Stadium, Peel L&P’s Liverpool Waters, Festival Gardens, and developments proposed by affordable housing provider Torus.

Reeves said the waterfront “has to have a major impact on people across all communities, and be a catalyst to transform lives. It needs to be growth which leaves nobody behind.”

Speaking to Place North West, Reeves said the waterfront plan would not only provide overarching guidance for development, but would also “create a coherent investment proposition”.

Everton Stadium

Momentum is building around Everton FC’s proposed £500m stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, with a planning application due by the end of the year after a series of public consultation events.

The predicted cost of the stadium within Peel L&P’s Liverpool Waters has already increased from £300m to £500m, and given the level of infrastructure needed at the derelict dockland to support the 52,000-person stadium, property professionals have suggested to Place the overall cost could near £1bn.

However, speaking to Place North West, Frank Rogers, chief executive of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, rejected the idea the project cost could reach that level of expense, and said: “We’re incredibly supportive of the stadium, it’s a project the whole City Region is behind, so we’re looking at delivering the right level of transport around that.”

Following suggestions that Everton FC should fund its own stadium without support from the City Region, Rogers said: “It’s not just a stadium. It’s about job creation, and economic growth.”

The comments on the Festival Gardens are staggering. People see it as green space because that’s how it was developed 30 years ago! I’ve no problem with building affordable houses on the site (not speculative tat), but the traffic management has got to be in place as existing infrastructure cannot cope. As for Everton’s stadium spiralling to £1 billion, have they not heard of value engineering? Such a cost is barely affordable in London let alone Liverpool.

When are they going to do something about lime street and brownlow hill that’s supposed to be Liverpool gateway. And central station redevelopment is a joke, it was much better before. I’d also like to know where the money for lime street station was spent cos it doesn’t look any different

The money on Lime Street station went on making the platforms a little bit longer and adding an extra one to get 5 or 6 more trains a day in. If anything this was bound to make the station look worse as it reduces the size of the already constricted concourse.
Lime Street needs a Piccadilly transformation at the back doubling its size onto the Liner Hotel car park land, making a new entrance at the back and getting it ready for HS whatever!

Not sure why ‘affordable housing’ should be the priority for the Festival Gardens site. Liverpool needs more high council tax band ‘unaffordable housing’ and the festival site seems like a good place to put it.

A dual carriageway linking the Waterfront to Aigburth Road/Speke Road via the Festival Gardens is the only way. This should be done with plenty of trees, good crossings, cycle lanes etc. Planned in the way Brodie would have in the early C20, but with plenty of ‘green’ infrastructure, this is the way to go.

In a climate emergency, any plans for Festival Gardens should be essentially car-free to avoid trip generation.
Similarly the Everton stadium should be served predominantly by cycle parking rather than car parking.
And a dual carriageway on Riverside Drive should be scrapped. In a climate emergency we need to manage demand not provide for ever more car trips.

£500m on top of the current stadium and dock conversion cost for infrastructure ? What kind of planning professionals suggest that ! i’d doubt it needs even a tenth of that on transport to enable full stadium events so whats the other £450m for ? gold plated water pipes, diamond encrusted electric sub stations.

You have to have modern access to a modern city. Upgrading Riverside Drive would simply provide a proper through route into the city from the south end, whether by public transport, bike or car. There ain’t enough room for bikes, buses or cars at the moment, and certainly not for all of them together.

If In the unlikely event it ever happens an they raise the money required Everton would be better served by moving to the Switch Island area, covered by both the M57 /58, the A59, and Merseyrail train service at Old Roan , putting it in the dock area will bring even more traffic into play thru the Litherland area, an area already choked with massive amounts of vehicles.

This stadium will never be built
Concentration should be in building massive offices
Everything goes to Manchester/Salford
Sad to say but true
Development in Liverpool area is far too slow and also buildings not talk enough

Anyone been down the Dock Road recently, with its great new cycle lane? This urgently needs a rethink! Infrasytucture is going to be essential for the sucess of development in the north dock area. With this new cycle lane, cars travelling towards Liverpool are driving nearly 350mm on the on coming traffics lane. There is no room with the parked cars. It looks small and busy now; so what happens when all this development takes place. This is NOT a go at cyclists, its just the wrong place to cramp up a road which is expected to get busier!

What about further development of Wavertree Road. The old taskers and royal Oak pub could do with being pulled down and housing put on the land. It looks a mess as it is and the royal Oak has been closed for years.